I went to dinner last night at the home of some new friends, Piikalama and Noeau. (Noeau is our fearless leader for the garden project at the lodge.) We sat on their lanai and had a wonderful dinner of poached fish, pickled lemon rind, beet salad and tasty beer. It rained off and on and made some pretty music on the tin roof with a huge windchime playing backup. As we sat and ate and talked, the night got darker and finally it got really dark. I haven't seen a streetlight yet on this part of the coast and it was a new moon, so it got to be deep, dark and inky really fast. We started talking about the night and the rain and Noeau said in an off-hand way, "Don't wander around on a new moon. I could tell you ghost stories..." I wasn't going to let that opportunity pass me by, so I pressed her for details. Noeau practices la'au, the Hawaiian art of using plants for healing. She's been learning this sacred practice for over 10 years and has got some serious connection to the land, and I was sure, a good story about some spirits she'd encountered.
The tale she told me was about a walk that she took a long time ago in the afternoon on a new moon. Her daughters were little and they lived on top of a remote gulch with only one other neighbor. Every afternoon, Noeau would take a walk down to the gulch to say hello to the bees, visit a sacred stone and practice her la'au. So she told her kids she'd be back in an hour and went out on her daily walk. On this particular afternoon, she was walking with her dog and somehow managed to get lost in the bamboo grove she walked through every day on her way to the bees. Her dog successfully led her out of the bamboo and she went on to visit the hive she said hello to every day. Only on this afternoon, the bees started flying at her as soon as she approached, not stinging her, but butting into her with their small bodies. Normally they were friendly and she could sit with them for a while. She thought this and getting lost in the bamboo were odd, but didn't make much of it and moved on to visit her stone, but it wasn't there. It was a big stone, bigger than a bowling ball, but today it had moved. Also strange. So she kept going and went down to her spot at the bottom of the gulch to say her prayers for la'au. When she came back up, the cows were doing something strange. They were all in a perfect line from one side of the gulch to the other, with a big red steer at the front. And all of them were staring at her, not blinking, not moving, just staring. She had her faithful pup with her and tried to get her to chase the cows off, but the dog just whimpered and ran away. So Noeau took a big stick and started walking towards the cow, waving the stick and trying to herd them up the gulch. At this point all 200 cows started to charge all at once. Noeau had no choice but to run back down to the edge of the gulch and jump off the end, down a steep cliff and hang onto the throny plants on the side so she didn't fall straight down. She looked up and there were the cows, standing on the edge, looking down at her as she's clinging to a thorn bush for dear life.
So here she is, trying not to fall, its getting dark now and this bunch of cows are just looking at her and not moving. So she starts to climb sideways, trying to get to the other side of the gulch to get around the cows. By the time she gets there, its pitch black, no moon, in the middle of the jungley gulch. But at least the cows have gone away. She starts to pick her way through the vines and trees, but can't really see anything, so its slow going. Then she feels a hand, or something like a hand, press down very firmly on her forehead and push her to the ground. And it keeps her right there. She's sure it's a spirit and equally sure that she's pretty stuck. She can't see, she can't move, and her kids are home alone, expecting her back by now. She starts to panic, begins crying and commences to say every prayer she can remember while very slowly crawling forward with this spirit pushing her back. After a long while of crawling, crying and praying, she gets to a clearing and suddenly she can stand up again. Hallelujah! At this point she runs home, as fast as she can. When she's about 1000 feet from her house, she hears screaming. Her heart drops. It's her children crying and yelling and she runs even faster to get back to the house. The little girls are in hysterics, the kind of crying where they can't really even talk they're so upset, but they seem to be okay. After calling a friend to come over and help calm all of them down, the girls are breathing enough to tell their story: when night fell, the house started shaking, something was scratching at the windows and trying to get in the door and wooden owl on the mantel was spinning around of its own accord. They didn't know what to do and this went on until Noeau walked in the door.
A while later, Noeau tells her kumu la'au (master and teacher) Papa Henry the story to see what he has to say about the matter. He listens patiently and then asks her where the moon was when she took this little walk of hers. She tells him it was a new moon and he looks at her like, "Duh, what were you thinking?" Apparently every good Hawaiian knows that you can't go wandering around by yourself in wild places on a new moon. Mischievous spirits will mess with you if you're dumb enough to do something like that.
Since I was so enthralled, they proceeded to tell me lots of other bone-chilling tales. Piikalama was born and raised on Kauai, the oldest of the islands and tourist development came later there. He grew up in a little gulch on the north shore where the only two houses were his and his grandmother's. There wasn't electricity there until 1983. He started to tell me about his grandfather who was a famous kahuna, which is something like a sorcerer or witch doctor. The source of this man's power was a set of magical stones. There is a famous story about this man and a Baptist missionary who came to the island in the 1930's. Having heard about the powerful kahuna, the missionary went over there to see if he couldn't preach the gospel and convert the man to the saving graces of Jesus Christ. The kahuna listened patiently and then took put his sacred stones on the table. He told the missionary, "If you're god can do this, I'll gladly change religions." The rocks proceeded to dance across the table. The missionary left, completely stunned.
This was not the best story about the kahuna, though. As usual, the most interesting story involves a woman. Piikalama's mother was a Christian. She married Piikalama's father, the kahuna's son, and was constant thorn in the old man's side. The kahuna desperately wanted to pass on these magical stones to one of his sons, but it seems that none of them wanted to get involved. Especially not Piikalama's father, whose Christian wife was really opposed to taking in a set of pagan rocks, threatening divorce if those stones entered the house. Finally, the kahuna got so fed up with this woman interfering that he decided to put a curse on her. In Hawaii, this takes the form of a fireball that you send to the person's house. Piikalama tells me that he's personally seen these with such off-hand sincerity that I'm compelled to believe him. The catch with this whole cursing business is that if the recipient of the bad ju-ju is spiritually stronger than you, that fireball comes right back to your house and is doubly strong. I suppose this keeps folks from cursing each other left and right, maintaining some semblance of peace. But not today. So here comes the fireball. Piikalama's mother sees it coming across the gulch from the old man's house to hers. The whole building starts shaking and thousands of eyes are peering in the windows, evil spirits trying to get in. She falls down on her knees and starts praying to Jesus. All the sudden these two angels appear by her side. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed and wearing business suits. This is the 1950's and these angels are the epitome of the Western stereotype. Piikalama tells me that at this point, there wasn't a white person who lived anywhere on the island and he thought it was strange that the angels took this form. (I think its a pretty bold metaphor for how this woman chose the new Western ways over the old island ways, but we won't do a literary criticism of the story right now.) So she's praying and these angels show up and suddenly she the house stops shaking and she sees that fireball go zipping back across the gulch. Piikalama's grandfather becomes deathly ill and is hospitalized, on the brink of death. He asks forgiveness from Piikalama's mother, who graciously grants it, and his health is restored. I think that was his last curse. When he died the stones disappeared and so did the kahuna magic in that part of Kauai.
I was enthralled with these stories and felt some spine-tingling magic for a good hour while these two were swapping ghost tales over dinner. I'm not here to make you believe in spirits or kahuna curses, but it was the most entertaining dinner conversation I've had in a good long while.
The tale she told me was about a walk that she took a long time ago in the afternoon on a new moon. Her daughters were little and they lived on top of a remote gulch with only one other neighbor. Every afternoon, Noeau would take a walk down to the gulch to say hello to the bees, visit a sacred stone and practice her la'au. So she told her kids she'd be back in an hour and went out on her daily walk. On this particular afternoon, she was walking with her dog and somehow managed to get lost in the bamboo grove she walked through every day on her way to the bees. Her dog successfully led her out of the bamboo and she went on to visit the hive she said hello to every day. Only on this afternoon, the bees started flying at her as soon as she approached, not stinging her, but butting into her with their small bodies. Normally they were friendly and she could sit with them for a while. She thought this and getting lost in the bamboo were odd, but didn't make much of it and moved on to visit her stone, but it wasn't there. It was a big stone, bigger than a bowling ball, but today it had moved. Also strange. So she kept going and went down to her spot at the bottom of the gulch to say her prayers for la'au. When she came back up, the cows were doing something strange. They were all in a perfect line from one side of the gulch to the other, with a big red steer at the front. And all of them were staring at her, not blinking, not moving, just staring. She had her faithful pup with her and tried to get her to chase the cows off, but the dog just whimpered and ran away. So Noeau took a big stick and started walking towards the cow, waving the stick and trying to herd them up the gulch. At this point all 200 cows started to charge all at once. Noeau had no choice but to run back down to the edge of the gulch and jump off the end, down a steep cliff and hang onto the throny plants on the side so she didn't fall straight down. She looked up and there were the cows, standing on the edge, looking down at her as she's clinging to a thorn bush for dear life.
So here she is, trying not to fall, its getting dark now and this bunch of cows are just looking at her and not moving. So she starts to climb sideways, trying to get to the other side of the gulch to get around the cows. By the time she gets there, its pitch black, no moon, in the middle of the jungley gulch. But at least the cows have gone away. She starts to pick her way through the vines and trees, but can't really see anything, so its slow going. Then she feels a hand, or something like a hand, press down very firmly on her forehead and push her to the ground. And it keeps her right there. She's sure it's a spirit and equally sure that she's pretty stuck. She can't see, she can't move, and her kids are home alone, expecting her back by now. She starts to panic, begins crying and commences to say every prayer she can remember while very slowly crawling forward with this spirit pushing her back. After a long while of crawling, crying and praying, she gets to a clearing and suddenly she can stand up again. Hallelujah! At this point she runs home, as fast as she can. When she's about 1000 feet from her house, she hears screaming. Her heart drops. It's her children crying and yelling and she runs even faster to get back to the house. The little girls are in hysterics, the kind of crying where they can't really even talk they're so upset, but they seem to be okay. After calling a friend to come over and help calm all of them down, the girls are breathing enough to tell their story: when night fell, the house started shaking, something was scratching at the windows and trying to get in the door and wooden owl on the mantel was spinning around of its own accord. They didn't know what to do and this went on until Noeau walked in the door.
A while later, Noeau tells her kumu la'au (master and teacher) Papa Henry the story to see what he has to say about the matter. He listens patiently and then asks her where the moon was when she took this little walk of hers. She tells him it was a new moon and he looks at her like, "Duh, what were you thinking?" Apparently every good Hawaiian knows that you can't go wandering around by yourself in wild places on a new moon. Mischievous spirits will mess with you if you're dumb enough to do something like that.
Since I was so enthralled, they proceeded to tell me lots of other bone-chilling tales. Piikalama was born and raised on Kauai, the oldest of the islands and tourist development came later there. He grew up in a little gulch on the north shore where the only two houses were his and his grandmother's. There wasn't electricity there until 1983. He started to tell me about his grandfather who was a famous kahuna, which is something like a sorcerer or witch doctor. The source of this man's power was a set of magical stones. There is a famous story about this man and a Baptist missionary who came to the island in the 1930's. Having heard about the powerful kahuna, the missionary went over there to see if he couldn't preach the gospel and convert the man to the saving graces of Jesus Christ. The kahuna listened patiently and then took put his sacred stones on the table. He told the missionary, "If you're god can do this, I'll gladly change religions." The rocks proceeded to dance across the table. The missionary left, completely stunned.
This was not the best story about the kahuna, though. As usual, the most interesting story involves a woman. Piikalama's mother was a Christian. She married Piikalama's father, the kahuna's son, and was constant thorn in the old man's side. The kahuna desperately wanted to pass on these magical stones to one of his sons, but it seems that none of them wanted to get involved. Especially not Piikalama's father, whose Christian wife was really opposed to taking in a set of pagan rocks, threatening divorce if those stones entered the house. Finally, the kahuna got so fed up with this woman interfering that he decided to put a curse on her. In Hawaii, this takes the form of a fireball that you send to the person's house. Piikalama tells me that he's personally seen these with such off-hand sincerity that I'm compelled to believe him. The catch with this whole cursing business is that if the recipient of the bad ju-ju is spiritually stronger than you, that fireball comes right back to your house and is doubly strong. I suppose this keeps folks from cursing each other left and right, maintaining some semblance of peace. But not today. So here comes the fireball. Piikalama's mother sees it coming across the gulch from the old man's house to hers. The whole building starts shaking and thousands of eyes are peering in the windows, evil spirits trying to get in. She falls down on her knees and starts praying to Jesus. All the sudden these two angels appear by her side. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed and wearing business suits. This is the 1950's and these angels are the epitome of the Western stereotype. Piikalama tells me that at this point, there wasn't a white person who lived anywhere on the island and he thought it was strange that the angels took this form. (I think its a pretty bold metaphor for how this woman chose the new Western ways over the old island ways, but we won't do a literary criticism of the story right now.) So she's praying and these angels show up and suddenly she the house stops shaking and she sees that fireball go zipping back across the gulch. Piikalama's grandfather becomes deathly ill and is hospitalized, on the brink of death. He asks forgiveness from Piikalama's mother, who graciously grants it, and his health is restored. I think that was his last curse. When he died the stones disappeared and so did the kahuna magic in that part of Kauai.
I was enthralled with these stories and felt some spine-tingling magic for a good hour while these two were swapping ghost tales over dinner. I'm not here to make you believe in spirits or kahuna curses, but it was the most entertaining dinner conversation I've had in a good long while.
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